Faust: A Tragedy
cherubs, that in the very moment when heroism is most necessary, he
loses all his manhood, and a few beardless boys, with psalms and
flosculosities, cheat him of the immortal soul which was his by the
signature of blood, and by the seal of a lifetime spent in giving
free rein to all sorts of foolish fancies and unprincipled
iniquities.
After this catastrophe there remains nothing but the formal
introduction of Faust to Heaven, for which the closing scene is
appropriated. The Virgin Mary, surrounded by pious Anchorites and
fair Penitents, with Fathers seraphic and ecstatic, is revealed in
the heavenly glory, awaiting the arrival of redeemed souls from
earth; and immediately the band of angels that had worsted
Mephistopheles appear aloft in triumph, bearing the immortal part of
Faust, and singing a hymn, the words of which are intended to convey
the moral of the piece:--
"_A rescued spirit to the goal_
_We bring of Earth's probation;_
/The ever-active striving soul/
/Works out its own salvation/.
_And when, in love and mercy strong,_
_His God and Saviour meets him,_
_The angel-choir, to join their throng,_
_With hearty welcome greets him_."
Among the throng of redeemed Penitents one appears conspicuous,
whose name, while she lived on earth, was Margaret; she is close by
the Virgin, interceding for Faust, and ever as she mounts with the
Queen of Heaven to higher stages of glory, draws the newcomer after
her to share in her sempiternal blessedness. The curtain then falls;
the redeemed throngs ascend; and the scene resounds with the
mystical chorus:--
_"Earth and earthly things_
_Type the celestial,_
_Shadow and shorn_
_Is all glory terrestrial;_
_Beauty immortal_
_The rapt spirit hails,_
_Where the eternally-_
_Female prevails."_
After so detailed an account of this rich and various exhibition of
imaginative power, the student of this great world-drama, to use a
German phrase, can have no difficulty in understanding the theology
and the theodicy of the great Teutonic poet. The promise of the
Prologue in Heaven is fulfilled; there is no such thing as
everlasting punishment; and the Evil Spirit is sure to be cheated
even of the souls for whom he has most surely bargained, if that
soul, after staining itself with any number of sins, only perseveres
at last in some course of honourable and useful activity. This is
not according to the common Protestant conception in such cases; for
Protestantism, having abolished Purgatory, lies under a necessity of
peopling Tartarus more largely; and besides, after such a solemn
compact with the Evil One, and twenty-four years (for that is the
number given in the legend) spent in unrepented indulgence of all
sensualities and vanities, it was dramatically as well as
theologically inconsistent to redeem such a deliberate and
persistent sinner from the damnation for which he had bargained. But
the hell of the mediæval Catholic Church, though terrible enough in
its pictorial presentation (as many an Italian cloister testifies)
was more accommodating in its adaptation to the many forms of human
weakness; and so, to magnify the grace of God, and make Christ all
in all, after a fashion which the severe Protestant Calvinist is
forced to condemn, the mediæval form of the Faust legend could
afford to save Faust, notwithstanding his blood-sealed transaction
with the Devil; and no one has a right to blame Goethe, morally and
theologically, for having adopted this view of the matter. But,
though the salvation of Faust, according to the feeling of orthodox
mediæval Christianity, is permissible, and even desirable, the
manner in which, and the process by which, his salvation is achieved
by the German Protestant poet differs very much from the treatment
it receives at the hand of the Catholic Church. In Christian
theology--and in any healthy system of human Ethics too, I
imagine--the forgiveness of a great sinner always implies confession
of guilt, and a process, sometimes painful and protracted, of
repentance and amendment; but of this not a hint occurs in the
second part of Faust; and so the moral instincts of man, which had
been so strongly appealed to in the first part, are ignored, with a
feeling of great moral dissatisfaction as the unavoidable result. So
much for the ethico-theological aspect of the case. Æsthetically,
and viewed as a dramatic continuation of the first part, the second
part of the poem is much more at fault, and must be pronounced, with
all its wealth of imaginative reproduction, and all its luxuriance
of rhythmical form, a magnificent failure. If this judgment appears
severe, it must be remembered that the very excellence of the first
part, considered morally and dramatically, rendered a satisfactory
continuation of it, even to the genius of a Goethe, both impolitic
and impossible. Who would ever dream of a continuation of Hamlet?
Had it pleased our great dramatic master to keep Hamlet alive amid
the general catastrophe of the play, as he might lightly have done,
the future fate of his hero would only have been a matter of
historical curiosity. For dramatic purposes his course was finished.
So with Faust. Though he remains on the stage in the pathetic
closing scene, dramatically his part is played out. The "/Hither
to me!/" of his fiendish companion is quite enough for the
satisfaction of the moral feeling which the catastrophe has excited;
all beyond this is a matter, no doubt, for metaphysical speculation
and theological solution, but with which the dramatist has nothing
to do. But even if there were any feeling in the breast of the
spectator, causing him to look for some terrestrial continuation of
the sad story which he has been witnessing, by the manner in which
he has conducted this continuation the poet has altogether cut
himself off from the moral sympathy which so spontaneously flowed as
a tribute to his art in the first part. The history of Faust and
Margaret, notwithstanding the magical or diabolic background on
which it figures, is a simple story of flesh and blood, a story
which would remain equally true and equally affecting were the demon
and the witches removed altogether from the scene. But now, in this
second part, we are charmed by the wand of the fiendish harlequin
into a region of mere fancy and phantasmagoria, into a swarming
Fair, so to speak, of multitudinous phantasmal figures, through the
midst of which the real actors flit to and fro like a few idle
civilians amid the ordered files and motley groups of some gigantic
host. The primary here is buried in the secondary; the actors are
lost in their environment; and the real throughout, in a most unreal
fashion, confounded with the ideal. Faust, of course, and
Mephistopheles, and even Wagner, peering with glittering eye through
the smoke of his alchymical kitchen, are the same creatures of flesh
and blood that we were made acquainted with in part one; only all
perhaps a little enfeebled in character; Mephistopheles a little
more of the conjuror, and a little less of the Devil; Faust much
less of a thinker, and not a whit less of a sensualist; Wagner much
less modest, and much more besotted in the disnatured studies and
fanciful operations of his chemical kitchen. All this is real. But
this real Faust becomes enamoured of a phantom Helen; and of this
monstrous embrace an ideal poetic child, incarnating, we presume,
the contrary beauties of the Classical and the Romantic schools, is
the product. Of such a strange jumble we may say truly, as Jeffrey
said falsely of Wordsworth's "Excursion," "_This will never
do_." Such a violation of all the principles of common sense and
of good taste cannot be pardoned even to Goethe. The faults of men
of genius, it has been said, are the consolation of the dunces; but
whether the dunces choose to console themselves in this way or not,
the fact is certain, that on the stern battlefield of public life,
and no less in the flowery realms of imaginative construction, a
great genius is precisely the man to make occasionally a great
blunder. There maybe some few great things, and some wonderful
things, and not a few wise things (as who could expect otherwise
from Goethe) in the second part of Faust; but it is certainly
neither a great drama nor the just sequence of a great drama. I am
inclined to compare it with the rich fanciful work familiar to the
students of art, in the so-called _Loggie_, or galleries of Raphael,
in the Vatican. In the first part of Faust, Goethe is a great
dramatist; in the second part he is an arabesque painter. It is no
small matter to compose poetical arabesques, as our poet has done so
luxuriantly in the Classical Walpurgis Night, and other parts of
this piece; and a very natural affair, too, one may remark, in the
circumstances of the present composition. It is rare, perhaps
impossible, in the history of literary manifestation, that a poet
should commence a great poem in the fervour of youth, continue it
through the firmness of middle life, and finish it in the serenity
of an advanced old age, with a homogeneousness of inspiration, and a
perfectly consistent handling throughout. Goethe, in particular, was
a man who grew, as he advanced, into many new shapes, and, of
course, grew out of the old ones; and, though he was to the end a
consummate artist, and there was no question of decayed powers, much
less of dotage, in the grand old octogenarian, it was an artistic
blunder in him to weave the fantastic tissue of fair forms, which
amused his later years, into a common web with the tale of strong
human passion, which had grown into a well-rounded dramatic shape
under the influence of his most fervid youthful inspirations. The
error lay in the name and the connection perhaps more than in the
matter. A classical Walpurgis Night, or a love adventure with a
resuscitated Helen of Troy, might have formed a very pleasing
exhibition as a masque or show for an academical celebration--as at
Oxford, for instance, in Commemoration season--while, as a second
part of Faust, it falls flat. Let it contain as many allegories as
the wise old poet-philosopher may have meant to smuggle into it, and
as many mysteries as the mystery-loving race of German commentators
may have strained themselves to draw out of it; as it stands, and
where it stands, and with the claims which it necessarily makes, it
remains a brilliant blunder and a magnificent mistake; and with this
we must be content. Those whose organ of reverence is stronger than
their love of truth, will, of course, think otherwise; and this is
no doubt the most suitable excuse for any nonsense that may have
been thought or written on the subject; but, if it be a part of the
wisdom of life to learn to look calmly on plain facts, even when
most disagreeable, it belongs no less to an educated literary
judgment to admit honestly the special shortcomings of a great
genius, without prejudice to his general merits. An ignorant worship
is a poor substitute for a just appreciation.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
Dr. Henry Faust, _a scholar._
Wagner, _Faust’s servant._
Mephistopheles, _a Devil._
Margaret, _Faust’s love. Also called Gretchen._
Martha, _Margaret’s neighbour._
Eliza, _an acquaintance of Margaret’s._
Valentin, _Margaret’s brother._
Altmayer, Brander, Frosch, Siebel, _patrons of Auerbach’s Wine
Cellar.
_Students, Spirits, Women, Angels, Servants, Beggars, Soldiers,
Peasants, Cat-Apes, Witches, Director of the Theatre, Leader of the
Orchestra, Idealist, Realist, Sceptic, etc._
DEDICATION.
_Prefixed to the Later Editions of Faust._
Ye hover nigh, dim-floating shapes again,
That erst the misty eye of Fancy knew!
Shall I once more your shadowy flight detain,
And the fond dreamings of my youth pursue?